Nvidia plans up to $3 billion investment in Stargate data centers

Nvidia will invest up to $3 billion in Lancium, the power infrastructure developer behind the Stargate data center campus in Texas, a deal that pushes the chipmaker deeper into the physical buildout of artificial intelligence. The structure would begin with $2 billion for about a 20% stake, with another $1 billion possible if Lancium meets certain thresholds.

The move shows how the AI race has outgrown semiconductors alone. Nvidia still dominates advanced AI chips, but the company is now tying itself to the land, electricity, cooling systems and server campuses that make those chips usable at scale. That shift gives Nvidia a stronger position in the projects that need its hardware, networking gear and software, while also putting capital behind the facilities that are becoming the real bottleneck in AI growth.

Lancium has built its pitch around power access. It describes its campuses as gigawatt-scale, grid connected and fully approved, and lists multiple Texas sites, including the Abilene Clean Campus, Childress County Clean Campus and Hall County Clean Campus. The Texas footprint matters because large AI campuses have become industrial undertakings, shaped as much by grid capacity and permitting as by server demand. Those projects also face the usual pressure points around water use, land consumption and community concerns over utility strain.

The Stargate effort itself has expanded quickly. OpenAI announced the Stargate Project on January 21, 2025, saying it planned to invest $500 billion over four years in new AI infrastructure in the United States and begin deploying $100 billion immediately. On July 22, 2025, OpenAI said it and Oracle had entered an agreement to develop 4.5 gigawatts of additional Stargate data center capacity in the U.S., turning Stargate from a concept into a multi-site buildout measured in gigawatts rather than megawatts.

OpenAI later said on January 20, 2026, that Stargate campuses were meant to benefit local communities by creating jobs and bringing in local revenue. Nvidia’s planned investment adds another layer to that picture, suggesting the biggest AI players are no longer just buying compute. They are helping finance the power infrastructure that will determine where that compute can exist, who controls it and how fast it can be deployed.